Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets. API keys, passwords, certificates, and cryptographic keys are examples of things you might want to keep private. The following topics in this blog will explain more about Azure’s Key Vault.
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What is Azure Key Vault?
Azure Key Vault enables users to securely store and manage sensitive data like keys, passwords, certificates, and other sensitive information. These are kept in centralized storage that is protected by industry-standard algorithms and hardware security modules.
This protects information from being revealed through source code, which is a common mistake made by many developers. Developers tend to leave sensitive information in their source code, such as database connection strings, passwords, and secret keys, which might lead to unintended repercussions if accessed by the wrong people. Access to a key vault necessitates proper authentication and authorization, and RBAC allows users to fine-tune who has what permissions over sensitive data.
The following concerns are resolved by Azure Key Vault:
Secrets Management – Azure Key Vault may be used to store and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, API keys, and other secrets securely.
Key Management – Azure Key Vault can also be used as a solution for key management. It makes it simple to generate and manage encryption keys for your data.
Certificate Management – Azure Key Vault also includes a certificate management solution that makes it simple to enroll, manage, and deploy public and private certificates for usage with Azure and other connected resources. There are two service tiers in Azure Key Vault: Standard, which encrypts using a software key, and Premium, which encrypts with keys protected by a hardware security module (HSM).
Need for Azure Key Vault
In the ever-evolving surroundings of digital security, the need for an effective way to safeguard sensitive information is most important. This is where Azure Key Vault steps in, addressing crucial challenges faced by organizations in managing and securing their digital keys and secrets.
- Centralized Management: Azure Key Vault simplifies key, secret, and certificate management by providing a centralized platform, minimizing the complexities associated with distributed systems.
- Enhanced Security: With rising cyber threats, Azure Key Vault ensures advanced security, acting as a secure repository for cryptographic keys and secrets. It guarantees data protection and compliance with industry standards.
- Seamless Integration: Integrating seamlessly with Azure services, Azure Key Vault becomes an integral part of the ecosystem, facilitating the implementation of secure practices within applications and services.
- Key Rotation and Versioning: To adapt to evolving security needs, Azure Key Vault supports key rotation and versioning, allowing regular updates without disrupting application functionality.
- Developer Productivity: Designed with developers in mind, Azure Key Vault offers a user-friendly interface and well-documented APIs, making it easy for developers to incorporate encryption, decryption, and secret management into applications.
- Cost-Efficiency: Azure Key Vault contributes to cost-efficiency by providing a scalable and secure solution without requiring extensive infrastructure investments. Its pay-as-you-go model ensures businesses pay only for the services they use.
The important terms related to Key Vault are:
Tenant: The organization that owns and administers a specific instance of Microsoft cloud services is referred to as a tenant. It’s most commonly used to refer to an organization’s Azure and Microsoft 365 services.
Vault Owner: A vault owner can build a key vault and have complete control and access to it. Auditing can also be set up by the vault owner to keep track of who has access to the secrets and keys. The key lifecycle can be managed by administrators. They can restore the key to a new version, back it up, and perform other relevant operations.
Vault Consumer: When the vault owner grants access to the consumer, the consumer can act on the assets stored in the key vault. The actions available are determined by the permissions provided.
Managed HSM Administrators: A Managed HSM pool is completely under the control of users who have been assigned the Administrator position. They can establish more role assignments to provide other users regulated access.
Managed HSM Crypto Service Encryption User: Built-in roles are typically assigned to users or service principals who will use keys in Managed HSM to perform cryptographic activities. Crypto users can generate new keys but not delete existing ones.
Resource: A resource is an entity that may be managed in Azure.
Resource Group: A resource group is an Azure solution container that holds connected resources. The resource group can contain all of the resources in the solution or just the ones you want to manage as a group. You decide how to assign resources to resource groups based on what makes the most sense for your firm.
Security Principle: User-created apps, services, and automation tools employ Azure security principles to access specific Azure resources.
Azure Active Directory: Azure AD is a tenant’s Active Directory service. There are one or more domains in each directory. There can be multiple subscriptions linked with a directory, but only one tenant.
Azure Tenant ID: Within an Azure subscription, an Azure tenant ID is a unique way to identify an Azure AD instance.
Managed Identities: Azure Key Vault allows you to securely store credentials, keys, and secrets, but you must authenticate with Key Vault in order to retrieve them. Using a managed identity makes fixing this problem easy by providing Azure services with an automatically managed identity in Azure AD.
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What is Azure Key Vault Roles
Developers for Azure Applications: As developers craft Azure applications, they often need to incorporate keys for tasks like signing and encryption. Azure Key Vault becomes a valuable ally by storing these keys externally to the application. This not only aids in geographically dispersed applications but also ensures the keys’ security through industry-standard algorithms and hardware security modules.
Developers for Software as a Service (SaaS): For SaaS developers, the focus is on delivering core software features rather than managing customer tenant keys and secrets. Azure Key Vault steps in, allowing customers to manage and import their own keys into Azure. When cryptographic operations involving client keys are necessary, Key Vault seamlessly handles the process, ensuring the keys remain inaccessible to the application.
Chief Security Officer (CSO): Chief Security Officers prioritize secure key management compliant with standards like FIPS 140-2 Level 2 or FIPS 140-2 Level 3 HSMs. Azure Key Vault aligns with these requirements, offering control over key lifecycles and traceability of key usage. Even when utilizing multiple Azure services and resources, CSOs can centrally manage keys from a single location within Azure.
In Azure Key Vault:
- For FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated HSMs, they can select vaults.
- For FIPS 140-2 Level 3 verified HSMs, they can select managed HSM pools.
- Microsoft will not be able to see or extract your keys if you use Key Vault.
The use of keys is tracked in real-time. Regardless of how many vaults you have on Azure, which regions they support, or which applications use them, the vault provides a single interface.
Using Azure Key Vault
One of the most common scenarios that we see in Azure is creating infrastructure. The created virtual machines will typically contain operating system information, application data, and all of our information on the disk.
This needs to be encrypted so that if someone would get a hand on our disc, they would not be able to decrypt the information and see what was on the drive.
This is typically done by providing an encryption key, and by default, Azure comes with a platform to manage keys, so all disks in Azure are encrypted by default. But as customers, we can provide our own keys to encrypt and decrypt virtual machine drives using encryption keys.
These keys can be stored using Azure Key Vault. It is a Secure Storage for disk encryption keys. But this is not the only scenario where Azure Key Vault can help you.
For example, if you have a web application and you need to connect it to your SQL database, these applications will need to store connectivity information in their configuration like a server address, username, and password.
This type of information is typically called application secrets and Azure Key Vault can again help us with storing, securing, and managing these secrets.
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Microsoft Azure Key Vault Pricing
Vaults are offered in standard service tier and premium service tier.
Software-protected keys
HSM-protected keys
Managed HSM pools
Ways to Create a Key Vault in Azure
Following are the different ways in which an Azure Key Vault can be created.
Using Azure CLI
Azure Command-Line Interface can be used for creating a Key Vault. CLI can be used by installing it on your device or through the cloud shell. Assuming that you have installed CLI and logged in to your Azure account, the following steps are to be done for creating a Key Vault:
- Create a resource group with the following command:
az group create --name "myResourceGroup" -l "EastUS"
This will create a resource group with the name myResourcegroup in the location EastUs
- Use the Azure CLI az keyvault create command to create a Key Vault in the resource group from the previous step.
You will need to provide the following information:
Key vault name: A string of 3 to 24 characters that can contain only numbers (0-9), letters (a-z, A-Z), and hyphens (-)
Resource group name: myResourceGroup.
The location: EastUS
az keyvault create –name “<your-unique-keyvault-name>” –resource-group “myResourceGroup” –location “EastUS”
The output of this command shows the properties of the newly created key vault. Take note of the two properties listed below:
Vault Name: The name you provided to the –name parameter above
Vault URI: In the example, this is https://<your-unique-keyvault-name>.vault.azure.net/. Applications that use your vault through its REST API must use this URI.
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Using Azure Portal
After signing in to your account in the Azure portal follow these steps:
- Select Create a Resource from the Azure portal menu or the Home page.
- Enter Key Vault in the search box.
- Choose Key Vault from the list of results.
- Choose to Create from the Key Vault section.
- Provide the following information in the Create Key Vault section:
- Name: It is necessary to have a unique name.
- Subscription: Select a subscription option.
- Choose to Create New from the Resource Group drop-down menu and give your resource group a name.
- Select a location from the Location pull-down menu.
- Select Create after you’ve entered all of the above information.
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Conclusion
Microsoft Azure Key Vault gives a one-stop solution for storing and safeguarding keys using industry-standard algorithms and hardware security modules. Key Vault allows users to not include connectivity details in application and code and thus, prevents leaking of sensitive information.
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